The present invention disclosed herein relates to a spatial light modulator (SLM) and a method of fabricating the same, and more particularly, to a complex spatial light modulator and a method of fabricating the same.
An SLM is widely used for displaying digital hologram. Currently released SLMs may be divided into an amplitude type or a phase type, and be fabricated by mainly using the liquid crystal and a polarizer. Among them, the phase type SLMs are mainly used due to good diffraction efficiency. However, the phase type SLM is difficult to perfectly reproduce a hologram and only approximates a complex SLM. Accordingly, in order to display a perfect hologram, a complex SLM is necessary.
As a method of implementing the complex SLM, there are a software method and a hardware method. The software method is for specifically applying modulation to a phase type SLM and allows it to have characteristics of an amplitude type SLM, too. However, the software method does not represent perfect complex spatial characteristics. The hardware method is to consecutively use an amplitude type SLM and a phase type SLM. However, since this method uses two spatial SLMs, there are limitations of alignment and diffraction between the two SLMs.